EP 104: Product Management and AI: Insights from a Microsoft Product Manager

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The role of a product manager is changing more than probably ever before. So what does that mean for all of us using these products in the new age of AI? That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. Welcome. So excited to have you here. My name is Jordan Wilson. And what's Everyday AI? Well, it's a daily live stream podcast and our free daily newsletter. So make sure you check that out. Helping everyday people like you and me keep up with what's going on in the world of AI. And there's a lot. So I'm excited to have our guest today who is a senior product manager for Microsoft. But before we get to that, and I hope you're excited because I am as well. But let's first talk about what's going on in the world of AI news because there's a lot going on, as always. So first, there are some big Google Bard updates. So hours ago, Google just unrolled new updates to its large language model Bard, connecting it to YouTube, Google Drive, Gmail and other products. It also added a fact check button. So I did give it a quick run this morning. Not super impressed yet. Even with the fact check, it kind of brings up a similar Google search. But we'll, we'll let them dust off the bugs and check it out again in a week or so. So make sure to check out more in the newsletter today about that. Also, Microsoft speaking of, has a big special event coming up in New York City on Thursday. So recent report this morning suggests that not only will Microsoft be potentially unveiling some new Surface models, but also detailing some new AI features that could be rolled out across many of its Windows apps. So again, check out the newsletter for more on that. Speaking of AI and large language models and changing the way we work, there's even more AI writers on the way. So just announced Writer Inc. It's a startup that uses AI to help businesses write and summarize content. If you haven't heard of Writer Inc. It's it. They are more geared toward enterprise clients, but they just announced a $100 million fundraise recently. So Writer they says that Writer Inc. Says that they can produce written content as if it were written by a human. I don't know about y', all, but if you've taken the prime prompt polish, our free PPP course I feel you can do that anyways, right? All right, all right. All joking aside, let's talk. Let's talk product management. I'm excited for our guest today. I'm excited to talk product management because it's something we haven't talked about on the show yet and it's something that actually affects us in our everyday life. So bringing to the Everyday AI show, please help me welcome Ratley Seth, who is the senior product a senior product Manager manager at Microsoft Rally. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much. Good morning. Good evening folks around the world.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's a very early morning for you because you're joining us from the West Coast. So I have to start giving out special awards on the show for people that join us live at 5:30am their time. So thank you for that.

Thank you so much. It has fun and thanks for giving me the opportunity to join.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So as a reminder, thank you, thank you for everyone joining us live. And if you have questions for Raleigh, please get them in. And as a reminder, if you want to know all the secrets of what Microsoft is working on, that's not what we're here to talk about today. So if you want to know in general about product management and how the industry is changing, get those questions in. But let's start at the top rally. Can you actually explain to our audience because not everyone's a dork like me, but could you explain what product management is, is and what product managers in general work on?

Yeah, Product management is a super interesting field that has evolved over the last decade or so, but more or so it is different from project management in terms of product managers are supposed to set the vision. So while you guys are thinking and using charge pts, we are already thinking one step ahead where the future is evolving. Say Gartner's Hype Cycle came out. What are the Hype Cycle beyond the generative AI thinking? So, so we have to think in terms of the next vision strategy and roadmap building beyond what is currently available.

And that's so interesting because you talk about Hype Cycle and I think with so many products that have AI inside of it, it seems like it's hard to gauge that. So how does that even work? I guess in the day to day of a product manager, are people just our product manager seeing how everyone's using their products and looking at bugs reported, you know, looking at features like, like, like how does it actually work to what people experience when we sit down and use the products?

I would say product managers wear different hats. It's not just one that you just look at the users thing because users are giving the feedback of what we have shipped. So we have to keep an eye on not just the market, but also unmet needs. For example, when you talk about ppp, I also have for AI specifically a PPP of the equation called AI magic equals to plot, perception and presentation. But the part that usually project managers don't cover is perception. And perception, I mean, is what users don't tell you because they don't know. Maybe that's a blind spot. So that's where we explore in terms of for example, neurodiversity or neuroscience. Like sometimes those are even interesting concepts in the AI field that people and not usually, but in product manager we want to explore multiple discipline. So I would say we wear different hats. It's not just, hey, look at the market, where it's going, but figure out what's hidden also.

That's, that's fascinating. So tell me this because I'm very curious because I think the product lifecycle has changed dramatically. You know, with AI, probably in building the products, but also probably customer expectations. You know, because we just assume in this age, this new age of AI where everything moves so, so quickly, you know, when we get these, these new products to play with, it seems like every day. How can product managers in general keep up with all of that? Because it seems like consumer demands in this new age of AI are probably unrealistic.

Yeah. And I would plus one to that. So again, taking the analogy of magic with AI, usually the concept is the more you know, more you will miss. That's super interesting in terms of information knowledge that you'll think, hey, if I'm on top of everyday AI, maybe I will grasp more. But in terms of sometimes you have to have multiple diversity. Not just consume all the things, but filter it out. And that's where product managers have to have an interesting role of hey, just how do you consume different set of information? So I know it might be slightly different concept that you would have heard, but yeah, just assimilating. Yeah, yeah.

And hey, as, as a reminder, thank you everyone for joining us. So Ahmed, the first comment. Yeah, love it. Bronwyn joining us from South Africa. Brian, thank you for joining us from the AI or from the Gulf Coast, Rajiv talking about the ppp. Thank you, appreciate that. You know, Raleigh, I want to ask you because you've been at Microsoft now for more than a decade, right?

Yes.

So how has even just the everyday life of A product manager changed with AI. You know, I don't know but I assume that you know, maybe 11 years ago it wasn't quite at the brightness breakneck speed that it is today. I could be wrong, but how has even the role of a product manager changed over the last decade?

Yeah, I would say in terms of the entire tech industry, the evolution I've seen in the last decade is maybe we used to say cloud first to mobile first and now AI first is one of the approaches that across the tech industry they are taking up. How do you build product AI first? That doesn't mean ignore the non AI part, but how do you start thinking that user co creation would, could happen with AI? How do you bring in at the right moment AI? So in that terms I would say there are three styles of product managers evolving over the last six months or so. One is platform AIPM product managers which is, hey, what just day to day working on latest LLM models, trying to debug, trying to optimize. The second part is AI feature product manager which I categorize into. So they don't do LLM development, but whatever LLMs have been developed, they customize the prompt on that do prompt engineering. So that's a major bucket. I would say around 40 to 50% of current product management in AI are around that. The third bucket is where industry is evolving is AI adopter PMs and that is basically applied AI that maybe they're not shipping AI features but they want to use for their day to day productivity AI tools. And as per the Harvard Business Review recently, they've also mentioned in next couple of years if more product managers start adopting AI technology, their productivity and success rate of the product will increase by 25%. I don't know. So it's, it's a huge like shift in how product managers can increase the success rate.

Yeah. And I, I love how you laid out kind of the history, you know, going from, you know, kind of a cloud focus, mobile focus and now it's AI focused. Right. How can product managers keep up with that? Especially like I feel it's probably different with a company like Microsoft that has world class access to AI at every point of the product development life cycle. But for other product managers out there who maybe are tuning in and listening, how can they balance that, you know, AI first focus with accessibility to the tools or even with keeping a close hand in hand relationship with their customers and with those using the products. If there is this, you know, AI first mentality.

Yeah, I would say in that terms what AI has done it is democratized. So it's not that we have special access to the tools that maybe everyone will not have. We chatgpt we all use I would say you guys have the right tool sets in terms of how PMs can stay updated. The one area that everyone I would highly recommend product managers to spend more time is prompt strategy. I'm seeing like prompt engineering people talk about but it is usually because of engineering what people say it's an engineering job but for prompt strategy I've not seen a lot of templates and how people are evolving so and by that I mean as part of there is also a cool YouTube video if people are interested by Duolingo AI on how as part of the product management's life cycle prompt validation as far as coming early up before you start even designing your product. So I would say if one thing you have to do for product manager keeping up try to just explore keep like typing and seeing how prompt different prompt structures are changing, personalization are changing, voices is changing the response.

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On Gene, you know you mentioned something in there, just prompt engineering and I think that's, you know, it's a skill set that I think everyone's hearing about, but very few people know what it actually means because it seems like everyone's, you know, you know, giving it a different definition and it might be depending on what someone's trying to sell you on. But just can you give a little bit more advice on how you know product managers or even anyone should, should take on this role. I, I tell people it's a skill as crucial as searching the Internet so it's not as dependent on even what your job is. But you should know how to tr. How to chain together multiple prompts because it's the future of work. So, so what's your advice to people when tackling the basics of prompting?

Yeah, usually people start with the basics like hey, I have a need, I will just type it out. But there's the thing of context. I know you have talked a lot of time context, that's one of the piecing where prompt engineering or prompt strategies like the ChatGPT versions can give you quick answers. But how do you give the role and the task? So usually prompt is where you give a task and have a goal that's like input and output. But where we are saying and product managers are involved is not what meaning it's not just the output but how the output will be generated. Think of creative ways. So how can you manipulate the style tone? Those are very subtle details that people might not think about and might not type in the prompt but are super interesting. And it's not just in terms of like resolution or other things. But hey, it needs to be friendly, it needs to be conversational. All those human values sometimes have to be matching. So I would say just the tone and the style could be some of the aspects that people could add for prompt rather than just input output.

Yeah, it is, it is so. It is so crucial. And you know, I kind of laugh and poke fun sometimes on the show, you know, people sharing their prompts and I tell people, you know, it's not like, that's like saying you wanted to learn the Internet by using someone else's bookmarks. Like you really have to learn how to prompt on your own because it is an essential skill. So thank you everyone for joining us. Bronwyn talking about she's learning prompt engineering. Harvey joining us. Michael joining us. Have a question here Raleigh, I hope you can take this one. So Ben joining on LinkedIn says how is the industry using AI to improve or simplify product management?

Yeah, so I would say it is still evolving. In terms of simplifying, it's more of a. Just not the tools. I would say it's the process and the mentality, that's how the industry is evolving. That as I was mentioning earlier, just in terms of the product life cycle, usually it was hey, we envision, define product, develop, iterate on it. But just understanding that now it's a co creation that it's not just developed on your own that as a human I'll tell. But sometimes you have to plug and play based on the need. So what points should we invoke? AI. These are like tiny examples. Should it be always on? No, I don't want AI to be always on. So in terms of how do the industry improve? It's not about chatbot versus non chatbot, it's about where you can start plugging in co creation needs. And based on the industry it could be different. And based on the confidentiality, trust and data requirements, it could be different.

Yeah, that's such an important point that you bring up. Oh, and I have to get to the last part of this question too. Everyone always loves asking favorite tools. So rally, what are your favorite tools to use? I'm guessing he's talking AI tools. So whether it's in your role or outside of your role, what are those kind of favorite AI tools that you're using A lot?

Yeah, I use Even not just ChatGPT everyone uses but also Hugging face. Every new model that is there you can test out without setting up your own setup and playground. So I've been using for example for video storytelling people don't use depth map and there's a hugging face or hugging face is just one tool where I need to just understand and assess. Another one that I'm seeing a lot of potential that we use across is Figma for prototyping for early envisioning and Figma has been coming up if folks are interested, just watch the YouTube recent series on conflict 2023. It was done last year, last month I think but they had a lot of cool experiences in terms of how code development that I was talking about co creation with AI they are working on and they've started releasing plugins. I would say it's still not matured fully but in terms of how they're adding these tiny bits of it's a product called Genius by Figma that they're also evolving. So those two, I would say apart from the standard ones I have been exploring and interested more.

Yeah, no, it's. I actually very rarely, we very rarely talk about hugging face, you know, on this show but it's actually one of the most funded AI companies out there because people, developers, product managers, everyone spending so much time on there, you know, playing with, you know, different open source platforms which I think is extremely important for the development of software and user experience in general. Thank you everyone shouting out the PPP this morning. Thank you Brian. So how do you when we Talk about storytelling, rally specifically around products. Right. It's something we talked about a little bit before the show. But how can we tell better stories around products? And how do you think that's, that's changing? You know, because we have to be able to tell a good story about all the features of a product and then we're able to use these products as well to just tell better stories. So how does storytelling play into product management?

Yeah, I would say I did a recent survey on AI product management of how people are using and stakeholder communication is a big piece that they are expecting it would help. And stakeholder communication is becoming more interesting with AI because there's more and more, as I was mentioning information. But people have more and more time, your stakeholders and partners. So stories have to be very crisp. And by crisp I mean I've started exploring nano learning. So it's like not Even similar to YouTube short, how you can just provide less than a minute information for people, just for stakeholders. So in terms of storytelling, I would say just consuming the knowledge and condensing it for quick consumption. That's where creatively we are trying to find. It's much more beyond, I would say than saying, hey, use the summarization feature of YouTube or something. But just how do you have the context and nuggets Figure it out. So I would even give you have a question there because you look curious.

Oh no, no, no. Yeah, it's. But it's. That part is so fascinating, being able to use AI to tell better stories. And I love what you said there. Just like nano learning, right? It's like a minute long video. I think in some cases people might start to lose their attention now. You know, it's, it's almost like, you know, generative AI has allowed so many people to become storytellers. So it's, I think it's even that much harder to get your messaging to stand out. So even like let's, let's put on the role or on the hat again of a product manager if you're wanting to tell the story of your product. How can people do that in this age now where it seems like we're getting way more messaging, way more marketing, way more communication than ever before. So how can you kind of whether it's using AI or not, but how can you make that story of your product stand out?

Yeah, one of the examples I would give is like virtual cinematography. All the people say hey, it's for film industry, but even product managers can adopt. And there the example would be storyboarding. So I don't know if you have heard Jordan, but Leonardo Yep. They have started exploring storyboarding AI and by how that would be. They've not started releasing but they have started just showing showcasing in public media. An example is storyboards. It's not just quick final video creation but you have frames, you have scenes and how do you create scene by scenes, different frames and have a concept story that you can do within a minute. I've never seen because I've been part of some of the virtual cinematography earlier so. So I would say in that terms there are certain tools like mid Journey which will generate single images and then there are I've seen as part of I'm fully updated on like AI video creation tools where they'll teach you use Runway ML and did to generate video. But there's a midway where product managers get involved. You get to choose of what angle a lot of all features. I think Pika Labs on Discord released their camera Runway ML released their camera function. That's why because you get to control at what angle, at what speed that story is told.

There was a lot there to unpack. If you aren't able to keep up writing your notes fast enough, don't worry. We're going to be recapping everything that Rally's sharing about in the daily newsletter. So don't worry. Stick with us here. But you know when we look Raleigh into the future, which I know is hard to do but how do you see the role of the product manager changing? Because you know I kind of we kind of joked about this pre show but you know, working at Microsoft I feel that sometimes you like you all might be working in the future. Right. So what does the future look like for the rest of us and specifically for product management? How has it changed and how do you think it will continue to change?

Yeah, I would say another quote from Gartner. They have predicted by 2030 that at least 80% of the some of the product management project management jobs might be taken not taken over but like complemented by AI. So in that terms the main angle where product manager can keep focusing as creative thinking and analysis. So one of the trending areas I've seen again going back to our initial conversation of hype chat AI simulations not many people have started to explore of how simulation for future because you're currently having a need, you just predict for now. But how do you predict it's not about just diseases but in tech industry how do you do assimilation. But another one is the trust. So there is a Term called AI Trism T R I S M which is about this trust evolving. And there's another game if folks are interested in the trust and the privacy part. Gandalf AI. How, how basically it gamifies learning, prompt engineering and prompt injection. Another technical jargon, but prompt injection is just understanding how do you figure out and the right way to prompt. So. So I would say where the future is evolving and just using all the public references of hey, it's not just plugins and extensions, although I love a lot of extensions, but there's something more of trying to use it for different.

Yeah. Wow. So we've covered a lot on this show. So if you're just tuning in now, make sure you hit that rewind. Raleigh just gave us a whole lot to digest. So we talked about everything from kind of the history of product management, how you can use AI in your product management, the power of telling stories. But maybe Raleigh, what's your one takeaway again? I do think that there's going to be a lot of product managers listening to this. So with your great decade plus of experience at Microsoft, you're in the room where a lot of the future of AI is being built and being implemented. But what's your kind of one takeaway for maybe product managers that are tuning in and who are saying, you know, I want to grow my career, I want to, you know, keep up with, with, with everything AI. What's. What's kind of your takeaway advice for everyone?

Yeah, I would say more than just reading, do it. So my perfect example is because I categorize myself abc, which is always be curious. And I'll leave with the quote of when was the last time you did something for the first time? And that applies to AI. Also, what was the last AI tool you experimented with even if you didn't use it like day to day. So keep exploring. That's how you learn.

Oh, love that, Love that. Such, such great advice. So Raleigh, thank you so much again for joining the Everyday AI show and taking us on. Really a history lesson of product management. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for inviting. It has been a pleasure. See you.

All right. And hey, as a reminder, like I said, we're going to be recapping it all, so just make sure you go to your everydayai. Com. That's your everydayai dot com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. It's going to be coming out in a couple hours. Raleigh mentioned so many cool tools. A couple of them I haven't even used, which is crazy. Because I use just about everything. So don't worry. We got you. Check out the newsletter. Thank you again for tuning in. And we hope to see you back for another episode of Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

All.

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